Developers Fork Mandriva Linux, Creating Mageia

Anssi55 writes "As most of the Mandriva employees working on the Linux distribution were laid off due to the liquidation of Edge-IT (a subsidiary of Mandriva SA) and trust in the company has diminished, the development community (including the core developers) has decided to fork the project. The new Linux distribution, named Mageia, will be managed by a not-for-profit organization that will be set up in the coming days. There are already many people that have decided to follow the fork, but the people behind it are still welcoming any help offered in the various tasks related to establishing the new distribution."

Comments

fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck

that's gonna rock

Re:fuck

[Buzzo]

What the fork?

Name

[future assassin]

Why do OS developers and other free software creators always pick user unfriendly names. When ever someone who knows nothing about free software/linuix asks me what free alternatives they could use I get a weird look from them when I tell them about Thunderbird, Firefox, Ubuntu, Amarok, Gimp and etc...

Re:Name

[valros]

I think here user unfriendly means different, the reason so many other names are "friendlier" is because they've been used so many times before.

Re:Name

[MBGMorden]

Yes because Excel, Powerpoint, Quicken, Maya, and Twitter are so much better . . .

Re:Name

[Xemu]

Well, Thunderbird and Firefox are a lot more userfriendly than your average car brand name or medication, yet the cars are bought. F-150, Escape Hybrid, E-series... not very userfriendly. Yet popular.
zafirlukast, rabeprazole, fexofenadine - even less userfriendly. Yet very popular

The gimp name is a marketing nightmare and probably has caused the software to be banned from more corporations than the developers realize.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do OS developers and other free software creators always pick user unfriendly names. When ever someone who knows nothing about free software/linuix asks me what free alternatives they could use I get a weird look from them when I tell them about Thunderbird, Firefox, Ubuntu, Amarok, Gimp and etc...

Why do car companies and other automobile manufactueres always pick user unfriendly names. When ever someone who knows nothing about motor vehicles asks me what their local car dealers have for sale I get a weird look from them when I tell them about Thunderbirds, Sophias, Imprezas, Miatas, Ram 350s and etc...

Re:Name

[nurb432]

One Word: Trademark.

its really hard these days to come up with useful names these days without infringing on another companies trademark. ESPECIALLY if you want to go international.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

The gimp name is a marketing nightmare and probably has caused the software to be banned from more corporations than the developers realize.

What's so bad about a decoration, something well-formed, or a dressmaker's tool that it needs to be banned? (Also, please name three of these corporations.)

Oh, I see, you don't know what the word "gimp" means, and only associate it with the once-sarcastic use as a nickname for crippled people, a usage which originates in an age when the tall guy was "Shorty" and the fat guy was "Tiny."

( Whoa, freaky - my captcha for this was "inverses." )

Re:Name

[smoothnorman]

yeah! If a name can cause a project to be ill-fated we're looking at one here. At least choose a name that suggests a dominant pronunciation to your target audience. Even "manbearpig" would've been a better choice.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god. Not this tired troll again. Can we just agree that 'Redundant' is a valid mod for this: Practically the same comment is posted on every story of a new open source project. I'm sure the replies will be the same again.

Re:Name

[Pharmboy]

I would agree. The fascination with recursive acronyms and "cute" names for mainstream products is not helping acceptance. Gimp is a good example, as it actually a good program that runs fine on Windows, but when people who want a photo editing program ask me for a free "photoshop" and I tell them "Gimp", they look at me like I just farted at the dinner table: Shocked and somewhat disgusted.

Hey, if you code the program, you can call it what you want, but if your goal is to get as many people using your software (which, in the absence of profit, would be the obvious indicated of success), then authors and groups might consider changing some names. Yes, part of the hacker culture is to have obscure names, but most people won't "get it", nor try the product if they think the name is too weird.

Most people wouldn't try "Burp Cola", even if a particular demographic thought the name was funny either.

Re:Name

[BrokenHalo]

Even "manbearpig" would've been a better choice.

That would have been an excellent choice for Microsoft Exchange... :-|

Re:Name

[tomhudson]

One Word: Trademark.

its really hard these days to come up with useful names these days without infringing on another companies trademark. ESPECIALLY if you want to go international.

You mean like "Mandrake"? Hearst sued them, but honestly, Mandriva? That's as bad as Mandrivel. Not like anyone cares any more.

Re:Name

[Americano]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gimp

Definition 3 also happens to be the one most people are familiar with. GIMP is a *horrible* name for that reason, and I can tell you that, while not banned, I had a manager look at me and say, "No, we'll just buy Photoshop," one time when I suggested "Why not just grab a copy of Gimp from the web to get the intern working on some of these images you want?"

It does happen.

Re:Name

[Elektroschock]

No, these names are English. That is not userfriendly but culturally biased.

Don't forget that Mandriva was in negotiations to get Russian state contracts. To me it looks like the Russians will simply sack Mandriva. The new distribution on a community/non-profit base is a perfect counter-weight.

Magea is magic.

Re:Name

[morgan_greywolf]

It probably doesn't have to do with its name. Many corporations ban open source because they developed software licensing policies that reflected the need to avoid piracy of closed-source software, intentional or otherwise. Unfortunately, the policies usually say that they won't use a software program unless they have paid a license fee to someone. Such rules also sometimes preclude the use of "bundled"[1] applications as well.

[1] An example of what I mean by "bundled" in this case would be like a scanner that comes bundled with a photo editing tool.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they are for the most part.

Powerpoint says something about what you do with it and conveys positive imagery - it's powerful, it's something you point at (a presentation). Excel - it doesn't really say what it is, but it conveys the idea of speed and success, which are important in business. Likewise with Quicken - they verbed an adjective (quick) that means something, and while potentially having some strange linguistic associations (quicken/quickening is the moment in pregnancy when a fetus' movement is first felt), that is not exactly an everyday word in the English language so the associations aren't very strong.

Maya has two common associations - it refers to the concept of the illusory nature of the world in the Hindu religious tradition, and it refers to an early central American civilization renowned for their relative scientific advancement - the former one, while not incredibly well known, is a pretty cool name for a 3D rendering package, and the name sounds good, not awkward on the tongue.

Twitter is an incredibly annoying sounding name in the English language. Not something I'd name a product I wanted anybody serious to ever use. But it is somewhat descriptive of what the annoying people do using this product - post small blurbs of inane content, like a bunch of giggling schoolgirls. So yeah, I don't love that name, but I see where it came from.

Now we come to Mageia. While it has a cool association if you are familiar with ancient Greek (magic arts, sorcery), I wouldn't have known that without looking it up, and I consider myself rather well educated and linguistically saavy. It won't trigger that association immediately, even in most geeky users, to be honest. But beyond that, the word formation is very awkward to pronounce in English. Worse even than "Linux", which suffered for many years from "I don't know how to pronounce it so it's awkward to discuss in a business context" syndrome, and is apparently still pronounced differently in the US vs. Europe (according to Wikipedia). Nevertheless, Linux is much less awkward to read or to say than "Mageia". But put together, "Mageia Linux", and it's pretty terrible sounding.

Furthermore, as some have pointed out, the name sounds out similarly to "my-gay-a" or "ma-gay-a" in American English. The word "gay" meaning homosexual but also now being a generic insult used by preteens to mean something that is stupid or just plain sucks - well, I can't see that being an association people want to make, particularly if you just heard this name pronounced rather than reading it and seeing it spelled out.

So I think it's fair to say that "Mageia Linux" is a pretty bad name indeed.

Re:Name

[Kjella]

Excel and Powerpoint aren't great, but their main brand was Microsoft Office until they got brand recognition on their own. So:

Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice: 1/2-1/2
MSIE vs Firefox: Internet Explorer, hello? 1-0
Outlook vs Thunderbird: As a hint to the calendaring functionality. 1-0
Windows vs Ubuntu: Not great but what makes windows pop up on your machine. 1-0
Windows Media Player vs Amarok: Media player? 1-0
Photoshop vs Gimp? P-h-o-t-o-shop! 1-0
Quicken vs GnuCash - Agreed, 0-1 to free software here

Total score: 5.5-1.5

Maya is more what I'd consider a professional application at $3500 MSRP, names matter little and doesn't really belong.
Twitter is not so much software as it is a service, not sure exactly what open source to compare against either. What's the OSS variety of Twitter?

Re:Name

[yumnaco]

I've been looking something like this. This article must be made in a carefull manner. Indonesia Furniture Manufacturer and Exporter :: Teak Garden Furniture :: Indonesian Teak Furniture: Indoor Teak Furniture, Teak Garden Furniture, Teak Table, Teak Chairs

Re:Name

[grumling]

"Why not just grab a copy of The GNU Image Processor from the web to get the intern working on some of these images you want?"

That may have gone over better.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with Maya ?

Re:Name

[Kjella]

And I think you can extend that to names that don't actually infringe trademarks, but is sufficiently close that someone would make a trademark lawsuit. Very few open source projects have the resources to fight over a name, even if they would eventually get the case dismissed.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up 1+ funny.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

That dictionary kinda sucks. They have no mention of its use for a decoration, as in the saddle decorations called "gimps" by horsemen around here in the Western US since at least 1950.

  But then, appeal to internet dictionary is a lousy way to win an argument anyway.

  I also notice you couldn't name even one such company.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

At least choose a name that suggests a dominant pronunciation to your target audience.

Perhaps the target market is just more literate that you are. Lots of people have no trouble parsing more than two consecutive vowels.

Re:Name

[couchslug]

"The gimp name is a marketing nightmare and probably has caused the software to be banned from more corporations than the developers realize."

They realize by now, so it is obvious they don't care.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank your for that.

It was complete and utter bollocks.

Re:Name

[Americano]

Funny, my company uses Apache, Tomcat, Perl, Python, PHP, Linux, GCC, Java, Eclipse, and a host of other FOSS software & tools. This has nothing to do with licensing or purchasing policies.

This was me, suggesting something to my manager, after which he looked at me like I had suggested we engage in a little light tickling - just for fun! - and then said, "No, let's just use Photoshop." The name gets an immediate response, and it's sometimes not a positive one.

If you choose a bad name for your software, this is going to happen. You won't be banned outright, managers will simply say, "No, let's just wait and get something professional." If Linux had named itself "DILDOS" (Dynamic Interactive Logical Display Operating System!), it probably wouldn't have gained much traction either, simply due to the snicker factor.

Re:Name

[Americano]

Yeah, I'll get right on wasting my time worrying about the branding of some software that I don't care a thing about. If you don't want people calling it "GIMP", don't name it "GIMP."

If you're saying that "GNU Image Processor" would be a "friendlier" name, then you're also implying that the term 'GIMP' will, at the very least raise a few eyebrows or cause a few snickers. And if that's the reaction you want for your software, that's fine. But if you want it to be seen as a viable alternative to a well-known proprietary package, then you don't hobble it with a terrible "hurr hurr you said dick" type of name.

Re:Name

[tverbeek]

Excel and Powerpoint aren't great, but their main brand was Microsoft Office until they got brand recognition on their own.

Incorrect and backwards.

Excel and PowerPoint had both been successful stand-alone products for several years before "Microsoft Office" was conceived, as a bundle (with Word) of three popular, name-brand products at a lower total price. At the time, Excel had just overtaken 1-2-3 as the best-selling spreadsheet program, and this was an effort at coattails-style marketing synergy, as avid Word users would become Excel and PowerPoint users, Excel fans would switch to Word and Powerpoint, etc. What Microsoft would lose in revenue they'd gain in market share, a tactic that contributed to the decline of WordPerfect, Borland, and Lotus, and Microsoft's near-monopoly on commercial office suites.

This was around the same time that Microsoft started making "Microsoft" part of the official names of the applications, amalgamating its line of popular individual software products into a monolithic brand: not just "Microsoft's spreadsheet program, Excel" but "the spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel". This went further as "Microsoft Excel" became "Microsoft Office Excel". (And if not for the anti-vertical-integration court cases, I suspect it would be bundled as "Microsoft Office Windows Excel" by now.)

Re:Name

[Americano]

"appeal to internet dictionary"? Dude, it's called a citation - it's not just a slang reference that somebody picked up from Pulp Fiction, 'gimp' is a legitimate word, referring to a limp. That's all that was intended to demonstrate - I'm not saying those other definitions aren't also legitimate, but let's be honest: ask somebody to define a "gimp", and see what the overwhelming response is - hint: most people aren't horsemen, or tailors.

As far as naming a company, why should I be bothered? I never claimed that 'many companies are refusing to use it,' I simply provided a single anecdote where at least my boss opted not to, for apparently no other reason than that he thought the name sounded unprofessional. You can refuse to believe it if you want, but you can't say the phenomenon doesn't exist: terrible branding gives a bad first impression.

Re:Name

[BitZtream]

Just because you can list some popular software packages that have stupid names doesn't change the point any.

Eventually people know what those names mean, however until you develop critical mass the name hurts.

Re:Name

[ultranova]

Gimp is a good example, as it actually a good program that runs fine on Windows

Apart from having to reset the "extended input devices" every now and then for my Wacom Bamboo tablet to be recogniced, yes.

This is not acceptable for production environment or, really, any environment. And the fact tha Gimp for Windows is unsupported doesn't really help anything.

Re:Name

[Cyberax]

"Don't forget that Mandriva was in negotiations to get Russian state contracts. To me it looks like the Russians will simply sack Mandriva."

Uhm. For Russian speakers the word "Mandriva" sounds threateningly close to a slang word for "vagina".

Re:Name

[drinkypoo]

How do you get modded up for that crap? Aside from Maya, all of those are fantastic names for products. Ubuntu, on the other hand...

Re:Name

[vasster]

Mageia is a Greek word and means magic, phonetic magia. Interesting name for a distribution.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

@Americano: @ScottAdams renamed #dildog to #dogbert so it wouldn't get misprinted

Re:Name

[Pfhreakaz0id]

yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Rule #1: Make it easy to pronounce so people aren't afraid to look stupid saying the name wrong. You think you are going to get critical mass with Ubuntu? Think again.

Re:Name

[Cylix]

DILDOS is a household name!

We can capitalize on the brand recognition already present with millions of housewives.

In fact, once we launch we will have an army of married and single women knocking down the doors for the brand new DILDOS operating system.

Unfortunately, netcraft will likely confirm DILDOS as dead due to very few individuals admitting publicly they use our truly orgasmic operating system.

Re:Name

[mweather]

Just use it's full name. Who could say not to the GNU Image Manipulation Program?

Re:Name

[mweather]

If you don't care a thing about GIMP, why did you suggest that your company start using it, and why are you discussing it's branding at length in an online forum on a Saturday?

Re:Name

[mweather]

Stussy used to be a popular clothing brand, despite sounding very close to the slang word for "vagina". People had the word proudly displayed on their chest in 5 inch high letters. And have you ever seen G-unit clothing? You can't tell me it doesn't look like it says cunt.

Re:Name

[grumbel]

People would then just end up calling it GNU, as GNU Image Processor is to unwieldy, which would lead to plenty of confusion down the line.

Re:Name

[omidaladini]

Because all user friendly .com's are taken. (Well, .org's as well.)

Re:Name

[Elektroschock]

Just in case you don't believe me:

* Bloomberg 8 Juli

* http://blog.quintura.com/2010/07/22/russia-to-create-linux-based-national-operating-system/

Re:Name

[azrider]

"Why not just grab a copy of The GNU Image Processor from the web to get the intern working on some of these images you want?"

Better yet, why not refer to it's correct name: The GNU Image Manipulation Program.

About GIMP Introduction to GIMP
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.
GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

From the GIMP website: http://www.gimp.org/about/introduction.html

Re:Name

[Cyberax]

I know.

There was a lot of laugh on Russian-speaking news sites when this news was announced.

Re:Name

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Listen to the pronounciation. ma... GAY... ah

That to me sounds like they are intent on competing head on with Ubuntu.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you just say that IE is better than Firefox? In what way, exactly?

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard they are planning to extend the branding throughout the distro to make a consistent user experience. The desktop icons will be named "My Gay Documents", "My Gay Videos", the start menu will say "My Gay Programs", etc.

Re:Name

[wampus]

Describing what it does in two words or less.

Re:Name

[SageMusings]

Well the part about "twitter" being an awful sounding name in English was pretty spot-on.
You have to give him credit for that.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

And Mandriva is better? It sounds like they didn't have enough money to hire an imaginative guy to create the brand.

Man, drive, ah?

Re:Name

[mysidia]

I suggest GIMP rename and use a simpler name such as ImageManip or PicEdit

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to sell computers for a few years, and believe me, people have no idea what Office is. Some people call it their Microsoft, some people don't even realize it's not just something essential to computerhood.

Re:Name

[MrCrassic]

Because they can't afford the super-expensive PR people that excel (no pun intended) at that...

Choosing a name is not as easy as most people think. There's a lot of psychology that goes behind a brand name that marketing and PR experts are best at exploiting. Additionally, most software developers aren't known for their UI creativity...

Re:Name

[Americano]

Because my boss wanted to get the intern set up quickly, so I suggested what I knew to be a "quick / decent" tool for them to do some image editing in.

Whether or not it got used is irrelevant to me, but it is relevant to this discussion, where somebody was claiming that nobody would refuse to use it based on a poor name choice. I can offer at least one example of a time that it *did* get passed over for exactly that reason.

Re:Name

[Americano]

Yeah, do you really want to be the one running around proclaiming the year of DILDOS on the desktop, or DILDOS on the phone, or DILDOS on the camera? Or heaven forbid, motherfucking DILDOS on a motherfucking plane?

I just don't think I'd really care to work in an IT shop that used nothing but DILDOS... IT is a male dominate field, we have more than enough dicks without importing fake ones.

Re:Name

[Tacvek]

The other thing to keep in mind is that for better or worse, Photoshop is the more familiar tool, so companies can rely the artists being familiar with it, not to mention it is a more polished tool. GIMP may have the technical capability to perform most Photoshop tasks, but it can be more of a pain to use.

Considering that the GIMP does not give productivity benefits over Photoshop, does not have an excellent reputation for quality (unlike say Apache), and the cost of a Photoshop license is rather small in business terms, it should be no surprise that Photoshop was picked, even without paying attention to the GIMP's name.

Re:Name

[avatar139]

Excel and Powerpoint aren't great, but their main brand was Microsoft Office until they got brand recognition on their own.

Incorrect and backwards.

Excel and PowerPoint had both been successful stand-alone products for several years before "Microsoft Office" was conceived, as a bundle (with Word) of three popular, name-brand products at a lower total price. At the time, Excel had just overtaken 1-2-3 as the best-selling spreadsheet program, and this was an effort at coattails-style marketing synergy, as avid Word users would become Excel and PowerPoint users, Excel fans would switch to Word and Powerpoint, etc. What Microsoft would lose in revenue they'd gain in market share, a tactic that contributed to the decline of WordPerfect, Borland, and Lotus, and Microsoft's near-monopoly on commercial office suites.

This was around the same time that Microsoft started making "Microsoft" part of the official names of the applications, amalgamating its line of popular individual software products into a monolithic brand: not just "Microsoft's spreadsheet program, Excel" but "the spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel". This went further as "Microsoft Excel" became "Microsoft Office Excel". (And if not for the anti-vertical-integration court cases, I suspect it would be bundled as "Microsoft Office Windows Excel" by now.)

What most people tend to forgot is that ironically the first version of Excel was actually released for the Mac in 1985 before making its debut on the PC...

Re:Name

[anomic_event]

I agree - please have someone pronounce 'Gnu/Linux' .... we need alliterative names in the native tongue of each language. Is that possible?

Re:Name

[JackieBrown]

I have no idea what Maya is. I can look it up, but that just makes MBGMorden's point.

The only reason I know what quicken is is because my credit union offers to export my records to quicken.

Twitter is know simply because of mass usage. Same with Excel. The name Excel doesn't produces mental images of spreadsheets.

I think OpenOffice did a better job naming their sub-products.

Re:Name

[HiThere]

Interesting, I took Mageia as a back-reference to the magician theme that Mandrake used. Mageia, then, would be (freely adapted) the arts & skills of the Magus.

Sorry it didn't mean anything to you.

The problem, though, isn't when it doesn't mean anything, as much as when it means something you really don't want it to mean, the the Chevy Nova in Spanish speaking countries.
    (No va == "Doesn't go")

Re:Name

[ImaLamer]

What most people tend to forgot is that ironically the first version of Excel was actually released for the Mac in 1985 before making its debut on the PC...

You have to go where the users are.

Re:Name

[HoppQ]

Interesting, I took Mageia as a back-reference to the magician theme that Mandrake used. Mageia, then, would be (freely adapted) the arts & skills of the Magus.

Sorry it didn't mean anything to you.

The problem, though, isn't when it doesn't mean anything, as much as when it means something you really don't want it to mean, the the Chevy Nova in Spanish speaking countries.

    (No va == "Doesn't go")

Also, the failure of the therapist profession in English speaking countries.
 

Re:Name

[NickFortune]

Powerpoint says something about what you do with it

What? You point at objects and lightning bursts from your fingertips and incinerates them? I think that must have been one of the features dropped my Microsoft when they bought out Forethought, Inc.

I think you're working very hard to try and force distinctions where none exist. Maya as a common concept? On the streets of Delhi, maybe.

Re:Name

[PenisLands]

Man, you're even bigger than Microsoft. I bet you have a gigantic rod, bigger than the Vatican.

Re:Name

[Elektroschock]

They can take a russian name.

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

'Mageia' is Greek for 'Magic'

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when it doesn't really mean what some people say it means, or it doesn't affect things the way people suggest:

http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

Fork of a fork

[Anonymous Coward]

Rememer that Mandiva was forked from Red Hat when it was Mandrake, and had bits of Connectiva too.

Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[xtracto]

Ahh open source... divide and conquer.

I recall Mandrake/Mandriva as one of the most user friendly distros when I used it... (IIRC around version 7 or 8).

In my opinion it would be really great if instead of doing another fork the Mageia developers tried to merge all the good features of Mandriva into Ubuntu.

I understand that Mandriva uses RPM and has several differences compared to Ubuntu, however merging both software would really benefit Ubuntu or better yet, Kubuntu (the chance to make it not suck).

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Buzzo]

Call it Mubuntu

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend helping openSUSE instead. Many technologies are similar and openSUSE is, in my opinion, one of the most nicely rounded distributions - it's just not the popular one.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Bigbutt]

Hell, I'm still using Mandrake. It's my firewall but still, I haven't had any problems.

[John]

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[rtfa-troll]

Traditionally, a proprietary fork has always been a bad thing. However, there's not so much evidence for that in open source. Most of the time the two forks take ideas from each other, both advancing faster till the stage where one of them stagnates and hands over it's features to the other.

From the user point of view this is great; you don't get data lock in because the source code always lets you see how the formats work; you do get much faster advancing software and it doesn't even really matter which fork you pick (though going with the community rather than the company has always been a good pick; just beware that often the community is with the company).

Just because forks are bad in proprietary software doesn't mean the same here.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

openSUSE is as bloated as Windows XP, but I love that lizard logo. Best linux logo ever.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[bigtomrodney]

I think it's loss in popularity has less to do with Ubuntu being what it is and more to do with how badly openSUSE fell apart in the 10.x releases. It went from being one of the most solid and user-friendly distros to failing its own dependency checks and making codecs more difficult to install. That was quite sad as it pioneered in taking the approach of providing codecs in the repos where they couldn't ship on the disc.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[rarel]

Mubuntu - Embrace the Dictatorship of Penguinariat

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[JamesP]

I would recommend helping openSUSE instead. Many technologies are similar and openSUSE is, in my opinion, one of the most nicely rounded distributions - it's just not the popular one.

Yeah, I wonder why.

Maybe because they don't come with repositories configured like ALL OTHER DISTRIBUTIONS out there, for NO REASON. And it's a PAIN to find the addresses, a PAIN to use Yast to pull from them (proxies, non intuitive dialogs, etc, etc)

That, and Suse smoked the data from my HD once.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid that a standard openSUSE install is just as small or bloated as a standard Ubuntu install, both increase significantly in size if you want all your favorite applications installed. However, you can create really slim distributions using SUSE Studio, - which is very nice for replacing default OSes on netbooks.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Elektroschock]

It would be much better when Mandriva was the user polished version on a Debian base.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, my, YaST. Yes, it's awful: it was designed to be a "do everything here" tool, and is instead a "do everything wrong here" tool. From merging non-RPM software installation, with always out of date components, into an RPM based system and refusing to resolve the issues, to its insistance that installing a new kernel means deleting all your old ones, it's not a good tool.

SuSE's default usage of ReiserFS was typical of EU software development: use the tool from the nice German boy, then find out he treats your files like he treated his Russian mail order bride. Thrash her the way she asks for until she demands more than you can provide, then secretly delete her, pretend it wasn't you, then get caught trying to hide the evidence. (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07/ff_hansreiser?currentPage=all)

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[xtracto]

It's not that forks are bad... they can be really good (e.g. X.org, gcc/egcs). However, in the case of "desktop linux", people complain again and again on the lack of "standards" (e.g., each distribution has its own GUI for network config, control panel, etc ).

Regarding code reuse/sharing, that is something I have always wondered about desktop distros. We have YaST, mandriva control center and ubuntu control center (or however they are named); back when I used Mandrake, I always wondered why didn't the other distros just copied the code of the Mandrake config tools (as they were the most user friendly) and adapted them to the other distros...

It seems to me there is a lot of reinventing the wheel between desktop distributions.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Urza9814]

No, they should merge all the good features of Ubuntu into Mandriva. That way you would not only have a good distro, but it would be one that wouldn't bail out during the install and would actually work with damn near any hardware you throw at it (i.e. Dell BCM43 chips - last time I tried to get one of those on Ubuntu it took _days_. On Mandriva it just worked.)

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[lbbros]

You can easily select "community repositories" from YaST. No need to know addresses and everything. And zypper, the package management tool (command-line), is also quite powerful nowadays. Plus, you have the openSUSE Build Service to make your own packages (and with kde-obs-generator you can make ones without knowing too much about packaging as well), openSUSE and other distros alike.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Kjella]

Sometimes, sometimes it looks like they just duplicated effort moving at much slower speed like the radeon/radeonhd drivers. Branching is a quite necessary tool in OSS, diverging forks not so much. That usually just means there's too different goals or too much ego on one and the same project. That doesn't include the forks where pretty much all the development switches to a fork, like say xorg fork where the xfree project was essentially dead. Or some other not development-related stuff happening like MySQL getting bought out.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[anshulajain]

Nothing's stopping Ubuntu from taking the MCC code and using it for Ubuntu.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[JamesP]

You can easily select "community repositories" from YaST.

Which version!?

You also cannot do 'network install' by picking from a list, last time I tried.

The main problem is doing work with past versions (which is 90% of the time I used Suse)

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using Mandriva for my desktop. Every time I've tried other distros, I always wind up coming back to Mandriva because none of them are as polished and well rounded as Mandriva has been. Last time I looked around was a little over a year ago.

I hope a community can be pulled things together, like Ubuntu has been able to create. Until other distros catch up with Mandriva, the loss of Mandriva is profound for Linux on the desktop.

Its a sad day. Good luck to all who were laid off from Mandriva.

Mandriva is dead. Long live Mandriva (Mageia)!

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

I made the switch.
I was an Mandriva contributor, but I've switched.
kubuntu is my default distro now and I'm replacing mandriva workstations by kubuntu's one.
kubuntu is less polished than mandriva, but the mandriva choise was bad. perl tools, non upstream projects (networkmanager vs. a buggy drakroam), a nd some developers made me switch. It isn't easy, but ppl before made it, and after 6 months, the choice *is* good.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a broadcom wireless chip. Until the free drivers are ready and shipped you're always going to roll a saving throw when you install Linux, regardless of distro. And when you do an upgrade, you'll have to roll the saving throw again. And again, and eventually it will break.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be stupid to try work with Ubuntu as they are not upstream friendly, they do not develope software and they do not care about the community. Mandriva was totally different when compared to Canonical.
Mandriva even is more user friendly at 2010.1 than Ubuntu is with 10.10 (beta). When it comes to handling a hardware, networks or multimedia, Mandriva wins. Only thing where Ubuntu goes around is the amount of packages and that goes in rare ones. Mandriva package repos had almost all what was needed, when just enabled the PLF repos.

Ubuntu is nothing. If ex-Mandriva employees would like to join forces with other distribution using DPKG, then it should be Debian. That is the force what actually keeps Ubuntu alive. Not the Ubuntu community or Canonical itself.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a running list of reasons why openSuse is withering on the vine.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[lbbros]

I'm not sure in which version it appeared, but at least I've seen it from 11.1 onwards (the first version I installed after trying 6.4 years ago).

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[the_womble]

I wonder why they are not working with the Unity Linux people? They could contribute to Unity, and Mageia could be simply the most Mandriva like branch of Unity.

With stuff like Ubuntu, I wonder how hard it would be to port the best bits of Mandriva (Control Centre, network applet, etc.) to Ubuntu?

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[richlv]

...and enabling by default that zenworks or whatever management daemon that broke things to the left and right, and installing beagle by default that resulted in seriously shitty performance. luckily, both of those things are gone in latest versions :)

ok, they still managed to fuckup things recently - they disabled touchpad tapping in installation environment, and desktop environments by default (from what i read, initially because gnome defaulted to it disabled).

why such imho braindead decisions get through is a bit of a puzzle to me...

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this. Unfortunately, it is hurting the adoptance of the 11.x series which brought along OBS, zypper, suse studio and many other really neat pioneering technologies as well as solutions to all the 10.x problems.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[CAIMLAS]

From the user point of view this is great; you don't get data lock in because the source code always lets you see how the formats work; you do get much faster advancing software and it doesn't even really matter which fork you pick (though going with the community rather than the company has always been a good pick; just beware that often the community is with the company).

I've given a great deal of thought to this connundrum, though I'd actually call it a bit of a paradox.

Why a paradox? Because, quite frankly, it's not that simple.

Just because the source is available and there are forks and something continues to be maintained does not mean your options are clear cut, easy, or cheap. It does not mean that compatibility remains. It's the same with dead proprietary software.

Yes, you could just keep using the same thing, year over year, because it "still works". But where does that leave you? You're no better or worse off were it proprietary software. (Actually, the case could be made that you're worse off: at least with proprietary software, finding exploits tends to go by the wayside; with open source, chances are these things are still floating around.)

Sure, with open source software you could pay to have the data put into another system or pay someone to maintain the existing system. But that's no different than with proprietary software, either: you can pay for data conversion and migration.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Compaqt]

The problem is Ubuntu's not really a community-based distribution (in the sense that Mageia wants to be). Basically, Mark ("Self Appointed Benevolent Dictator") and company have their own plans, which aren't always what the community wants.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Bungie]

Mandrake was a very easy to use and user friendly release of RedHat Linux, similar to how Ubuntu is an easier and more friendly version of Debian. Mandrake had a good following back in the day and I remember it being very easy to use.

I think that it would be best if they do their own thing and see what they come up with, not only because their base distros are completely different but because they could bring in new ideas. I'm hoping Mageia will be able to come up with a fresh user friendly Linux that can be offered as an alternative to Ubuntu, for the people who don't like Ubuntu (for whatever the reason). For example, non-techie people sometimes get word about sound and wireless problems with Ubuntu, well hey now you can offer Mageia.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

perl tools

The vast majority of their tools are python. There are a couple of odd balls in there too, but most everything is pure python.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[timbo234]

Maybe so, but these problems have been fixed in the 11.x releases. zypper works beautifully now, and fast too. And installing the codecs couldn't be easier: http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_formats/11.3

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Patch86]

With a proprietary fork, you remain stuck with what you've always used (data lock in is usually a barrier to following the fork and migrating), but you witness a large proportion of the development and user-base drop away, leaving your system under-supported and backwawrd.

With fewer barrier to migrating from one OSS fork to another, and more code liable to cross stream, this problem is far minimalised.

Still not a great situation to be in, but far better than it might be.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

"they should merge all the good features of Ubuntu into Mandriva"

Done! That was easy.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea I helped openSuSE for a few years beta testing for free. What did they do? Dropped to their knees for a few dollars to suck the MS big one. Few weeks later we start hearing about IP violations and a big smear campaign from MS. Help them any more? You've got to be kidding. Hell when this happened we replaced all out SuSE boxes with something else. The last Linuxfest I went to I wouldn't even take the free disk for the guys in their booth.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[rtfa-troll]

I'm sure that's occasionally true, but often you'll find that even in these cases they borrow code from each other (e.g. NetBSD vs. FreeBSD vs. Dragonfly). That means that the progress isn't as slowed as you think. Having said that a bit more general cooperation is always needed.

Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[GodWasAnAlien]

Given the roots of Mandriva/Mandrake, perhaps merging with Fedora should be considered.

Or perhaps Ubuntu may be interested.

I don't think there is a need for this thing to live independently.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't Mandriva a KDE distro? Given that, they should join the ranks of Kubuntu - given the quality of recent releases, those guys must be terribly understaffed.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[koterica]

There is always the question: Diversify or focus? However, we do not need redundant diversity. Basically, in order to decide if it is worth keeping a separate distro, we should determine if Mandriva had any goals that were unique. If not, by all means merge. However, if there is something unique about Mandriva (I haven't used it, I have no idea), than some effort should be made to preserve those unique goals. I am guessing that the people who are forking the project feel that it is worth keeping Mandriva alive as a separate project.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Xtravar]

A common misconception. Mandriva has always supported both KDE and Gnome. And it's always been better than every other distro at providing choice, ease of use, and development packages.

Hopefully if this Mageia thing takes off I can easily switch RPM repositories. Otherwise I suppose my installation is in jeopardy if Mandriva doesn't spring back up to its former glory.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Urza9814]

As a former Mandriva user (now on Arch) - there is very much a need for Mandriva to continue. It's the distro I always recommend to newbies, and as far as I know it's the only distro that is both extremely user-friendly and has excellent hardware support. I've seen far too many people give up on Linux because Ubuntu didn't like some piece of hardware. For a newbie's first Linux distro, you need to have at least basic support for _all_ hardware straight from the install. I've never seen Mandriva fail at that...and I've also never seen Ubuntu succeed.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[anshulajain]

Mandriva has (surprisingly) a very very polished GNOME distro...considering that they really do not have (had) enough manpower for GNOME packages as they do for KDE.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[anshulajain]

Fedora's way too experimental compared to Mandriva. There's no reason for MDV to merge with Fedora as Mandriva has always been a lot more stable and conservative as compared to Fedora. What this fork needs is to bring something new to the table like sharpening their desktop focus by bringing in an attention to detail that was lacking earlier, longer support lifecycles (unlikely but is needed), bringing on board the excellent (but unknown) PLF repositories...officially etc. They're working on all of this...and many more. This fork needs to survive...

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, KDE and Gnome were equally supported. In fact, I would install both (adding a user for the other desktop) to see which GUI worked best. But there were a lot of nice themes coming out too, and it was no problem to try them both.
 
Two things I can think of that are not matched by any distro: Mandriva Control Center, and restart points at install.
 
Please don't ask for them to join up with Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a different approach to root, plus it uses *spit* sudo. Oh I didn't say that right: *spit* sudo *spit*

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former Mandriva user (now on Arch) - there is very much a need for Mandriva to continue. It's the distro I always recommend to newbies, and as far as I know it's the only distro that is both extremely user-friendly and has excellent hardware support. I've seen far too many people give up on Linux because Ubuntu didn't like some piece of hardware. For a newbie's first Linux distro, you need to have at least basic support for _all_ hardware straight from the install. I've never seen Mandriva fail at that...and I've also never seen Ubuntu succeed.

This never ceases to amaze me about Linux. If Mandrake has such amazing hardware support, why the hell don't all the other distros have the same level of support. It's all open source right?

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[azrider]

Fedora's way too experimental compared to Mandriva. There's no reason for MDV to merge with Fedora as Mandriva has always been a lot more stable and conservative as compared to Fedora.

That is because Fedora is to RHEL as other distributions "testing" is to "stable". On Red Hat style distributions, if you want stability (without the support costs), you use CentOS or Scientific Linux. If you want to be bleeding edge (like I do on my personal system), you use the latest version of Fedora (I am not so "bleeding edge" as to use the beta - Fedora 13 with custom kernels works just fine :-]).

Fedora and stable?, use Fedora 12 or one of the LTS versions of any of the distributions. I started my distribution experience with Red Hat and will stay with it.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandriva has always had a unique goal - Linux on the desktop and wide, out of the box, hardware compatibility. Even to this day, they stand alone. They are the only distribution which ever achieved newbie desktop usability. Everyone is still playing catch up.

In fact, Mandrake/Mandriva is so good at what is does, it actually was hated by many computer elitists for that very reason. "Oh, that's a distro for newbs...its too easy." Even to this day, its the only "newbie" distro many recommend to new Linux users. As I said, Mandriva stands alone and everyone else is still playing catch up - and likely will be for at least another year or two.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Ecuador]

Opensuse is another user friendly distro that will install almost on anything. I remember I had a particularly non-mainstream laptop at one time and all my attempts at installing a distro failed (I had started from debian and went on...) until a friend suggested Suse. Well, being a KDE person and also hearing about problems on Ubuntu installations that my friends had (flash, sound most common) which I had never encountered I just stuck with Suse. I understand that due to Novel having a sort of a relationship with MS, Opensuse is not that well regarded on /., but anyway.

I should also add that in the end there is such a thing as too many distros. If there were not so many I would not have spent days attempting installs on the aforementioned laptop until I came across the right one. Then again how do I know that if there were few distros I would get one that was working?
Hmm, anyway, I always thought that they distros should not try to deviate a lot in structure and share much more in common than they are now so that things like hardware support etc would be common and work well on all, but apparently it is not something that is going to happen.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[rmcd]

The base system can be rock-solid, but the part exposed to users (and tweaked for the distro) can be broken. My experience is that the Ubuntu developers often break something (e.g., wireless) while trying to redesign the UI. A few releases back wireless stopped working for me. I found I could connect using barebones wpa_supplicant (a PITA to create the correct conf file, but it worked), but Network-manager was a mess. Slowly this got sorted out and NM now works for me.

Currently, on other machines with Debian and Ubuntu I'm having issues with grub2, while grub1 works great. It's the upgrade that that's the issue.

I suspect that that a bit more conservatism buys a lot more robustness and stability.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Requiem18th]

WTF country timeframe are you living on? Never seen Ubuntu succeed? Not even once? On what sort of bizarre island is it impossible to find a single PC that Ubuntu can successfully run?

Language requirements and brands (and models) of computers tried would be also interesting to see. I find it simply unconceivable that you have never seen Ubuntu working right from the start.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Urza9814]

WTF country timeframe are you living on? Never seen Ubuntu succeed? Not even once? On what sort of bizarre island is it impossible to find a single PC that Ubuntu can successfully run?

Language requirements and brands (and models) of computers tried would be also interesting to see. I find it simply unconceivable that you have never seen Ubuntu working right from the start.

Nope. Not even once. There's always some weird issue with the audio or the wifi or _something_. As for my own attempts - the last time I tried to install it on my own PC, the installer wouldn't even run (Mandriva, Arch, Slackware - hell, even Libranet - all install fine on the exact same PC.)

Language requirements are always US/English, computers are pretty much always Dell. Probably a couple other brands in there too, but I don't recall specifics. My PC is a Dell Vostro 1000. Only other one I remember any specifics about was an old Dell Inspiron. Took 3 days to get the wifi up on that one - when it worked straight off the install with Mandriva. Granted, the Dell branded broadcom chips (BCM43xx) have _terrible_ Linux support, but seriously, it's easier to install them on Arch than it is on Ubuntu. I think in the end we had to install ndiswrapper from source or something. And expecting a newbie to do something like that is absolute insanity. Though to be fair to Ubuntu, Mandriva did have some weird issues with ndiswrapper for one or two versions too. But I still don't know why the b43 or wl drivers wouldn't work on that Ubuntu install....

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[stms]

For a newbie's first Linux distro, you need to have at least basic support for _all_ hardware straight from the install. I've never seen Mandriva fail at that...and I've also never seen Ubuntu succeed.

Firstly let me say that if you've never seen Ubuntu succeed at hardware support you haven't seen much as far as Ubuntu goes. Next if Mandriva is good at hardware support (and Ubuntu so bad) that sounds like the perfect reason the merge the two projects.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[dbcad7]

So all laptops then.. not that your point isn't valid.. As a counterpoint, I have yet to try installing Ubuntu on a desktop that did not work.. Not that to me Ubuntu is the bee knees.. I dual boot Ubuntu and Xubuntu and spend the majority of my time with Xubuntu.. but, what you might find relevant is this.. my motherboard recently died on me, and the new on had a different chipset and onboard video, so I was prepared to have to reinstall them both.. guess what ?.. they just worked !. sound, video, network card.. not a problem at all.. it just adjusted and fixed everything. It has been a long time since I used Mandrake (never tried Mandriva).. Mandrake was my last RPM based distro.. I liked it, but I tried Debian after it.. and thereafter I stuck with Debian based distros.. It took awhile to jump aboard the Ubuntu train, and I probably would have not done it if it were not for the whole Iceweasel vs Firefox thing.. a minor annoyance, but I just did not like the problems I was having with Iceweasel, so I switched. I guess it's all about what works for you.. If you have good luck with Mandriva on laptops, then if it was me I be doing the same thing.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Compatibility is a driver issue. You need to tell people to get GNU/Linux hardware not use Mandriva. They will fail at using Mandriva just like at using Ubunta the second they have to upgrade. Ubuntu has the latest kernels and drivers so you shouldn't see failure any more than with Mandriva.

http://www.designed-for-linux.org

http://www.thinkpenguin.com

http://www.open-pc.com

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[jabster]

I'd rather see a merge with PCLOS. The only reason I came back from there to Mandriva was because of 64-bit. I think all these guys working with texstar would result in a really kick-ass distro.

Sure. More the merrier

[abhishekupadhya]

The world could use one more distro.

Re:Sure. More the merrier

[0111 1110]

* make Linux and free software straightforward to use for everyone;
  * provide integrated system configuration tools;
  * keep a high-level of integration between the base system, the desktop (KDE/GNOME) and applications; especially improve third-parties (be it free of proprietary software) integration;
  * target new architectures and form-factors;
  * improve our understanding of computers and electronics devices users.

How is this different from lots of other distros we already have? PCLinuxOS, Mint Linux, Kubuntu/Ubuntu...? They should call it YADL (Yet Another Desktop Linux). Shouldn't they be trying to do something different? How about a user friendly version of a fast/lite Linux. Something like Arch Linux or Gentoo with a GUI installer maybe? Or a mandriva fast and lite distro? The Mandriva-like equivalent of something like Lubuntu. If someone wants bloated, slow, but easy to use they can just install Windows 7, or Windows XP for that matter. I really don't get the point of all these Linux distros that want to install every Linux app ever written. That's the Microsoft Way. IMO, lite/fast or custom installs are the way. As Windows continues to grow exponentially larger and slower (Win7 requires a 40 GB partition), people may eventually throw up their hands and install a more sensible alternative that does what an operating system is supposed to do: run other programs, and that's all. And if they really, really want to go for Windows market share they could start by writing a GUI that is indistinguishable from Windows XP. IOW, something people are already used to. Then the only difference would be what applications they can (or can't) run and how much faster and more secure it is.

Re:Sure. More the merrier

[anshulajain]

Mandriva as a distro is pretty much dead. Mageia lives on as the "new Mandriva". It will end up being a replacement and is not "just another distro"

Re:Sure. More the merrier

[Bungie]

As Windows continues to grow exponentially larger and slower (Win7 requires a 40 GB partition), people may eventually throw up their hands and install a more sensible alternative that does what an operating system is supposed to do: run other programs, and that's all.

Except that most users don't just want an OS to run programs, they want it to have things like a web browser and media player right out of the box. Why do you think there's still a market for preloaded OEM software like Norton Antivirus, because people don't want to go select and purcase an AV product they want it to be already there when they buy the computer.

I don't use Windows Media Player but I like that it's installed with the OS in case I need to use it (and there are times where you do need to). In the old days I would setup Windows 95 and 98 systems for a school and we had to manually install so many things on each system it was just crazy. I'm grateful that now I don't have to select and manually install a media player, movie editor or e-mail client on every Windows computer I setup for people.

The days of MS-DOS are long gone and we have to accept that to most people the OS is no longer just a kernel and shell. There is a high demand from average users for more built in functionality than there is a demand for a lean and customized system.

Mandriva

[dontgetshocked]

I hope something comes of this,Mandriva is an excellent distro.It is not my primary but nonetheless it rocks.

Re:Mandriva

[Gaygirlie]

I am really saddened by the news. I have used Mandriva as my primary distro for several years, and every time I've tried any other distro I've always come back to Mandriva. There just is something so wrong in every distro that none of them can compare to it. Sure, it has its own niggles but overall it has less sharp corners than the competition and the corners aren't as lethal either. Now with all the core devs gone Mandriva is going to die and I don't know what distro to migrate to... :'(

Re:Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest Mageia

Re:Mandriva

[ianalis]

Me to. I don't like *Ubuntu and I'm too spoiled to use Fedora (KDE is no longer its primary DE too).

Re:Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

to... Mageia ?

And, the names get worse

[haruchai]

I used to be a big Mandrake fan, even though most of my Linux buddies spurned it - not hardcore enough for them. Interestingly, most of those now either run Mac OS X on their personal machines or Ubuntu - go figure. Fork all you want, but the NAMES? Gah, "Man Driver" was bad enough but now we have "My Gayer". Yah, even if I decide to try this one out, I guarantee it'll be running in a VM on a server hidden away "in a closet".

Re:And, the names get worse

[haruchai]

Also, that other Mandrake fork, PCLinuxOS is just as a bad a name - why didn't Bill Reynolds call it Texstar Linux? Calling a distro PCLinuxOS is like naming your dog BarkingMammal.

Re:And, the names get worse

[darthdavid]

To really be alike you need a third descriptor. BarkingQuadrupedMammal?

Re:And, the names get worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling a distro PCLinuxOS is like naming your dog BarkingMammal.

I want to see this as the quote at the bottom of Slashdot.

Re:And, the names get worse

[TheSkepticCanuck]

Sit, BarkingCanineMammal, sit. Good dog.

Re:And, the names get worse

[Anonymous Coward]

PC Licks Ass?

Re:And, the names get worse

[Kensor]

Translations of the Greek word (Mageia) include magic, magic arts, and sorcery. Perhaps not everything needs a sexual connotation, in English, at least.

Re:And, the names get worse

[aztracker1]

More like MammalFurCoat...

Re:And, the names get worse

[haruchai]

You have to consider the impression made on the end-user. Branding matters. Would you run Faggot Linux on your desktop?

Faggot:
a bundle of sticks, twigs, or branches bound together and used as fuel, a fascine, a torch, etc.

Re:And, the names get worse

[Anonymous Coward]

e. Fork all you want, but the NAMES? Gah, "Man Driver" was bad enough but now we have "My Gayer". .

It probably sounds bad because the people who chose these names are not native English speaker. A French speaker would say "Mohn-dree-vah"and "Mah-jay-yah".

Re:And, the names get worse

[Kensor]

Your escalating comment reminds me of a Stephen King character named Leland Gaunt, who was, for a while, proprietor of a shop called Needful Things. Gaunt commented to someone "and in the end I'd always offer weapons. And they'd always take them." Gaunt brought destruction to town, not constructive assistance. A faggot of wood can be used for good or ill, as can magic or sorcery via Mageia. Yes, branding matters a lot, and how brands are used matters more. Mageia has a neutral connotation when its meaning is realized, but its meaning can be twisted as well as most words. Names can be used either way, depending on intent. Since the intent is to bring useful benefit from Mageia, your mocking says more about you than the name.

Re:And, the names get worse

[haruchai]

So now you resort to ad hominem attacks? Who's escalating now? Please explain why you think that pointing out something that I believe is clearly a defect - and easily changed - makes me a "bringer of destruction".
When something is very unusual, the normal, instant reaction is to find something familiar in it. If the first association is distasteful, that can leave a lasting impression, which can only be overcome with considerable difficulty. I still have to contend with jokes about Mandriva whereas all my peers thought that Mandrake was a cool name - a few even tried it as a dual-boot. Very stupid of them to change it.

Re:And, the names get worse

[haruchai]

I'm well aware of this - I speak French. But they had been doing business in English for years - they didn't do their homework.

Re:And, the names get worse

[Kensor]

When someone points out something that does not work, that's not destruction, that's information. Software testers do it all the time, and that's a good thing. An established name is difficult to change, in large part because lots of people know the name. But it's also difficult to change because a better alternative needs to be ready to replace it. So, with what would you replace Mageia? Consider trademarks, international law, etc. Naming products isn't easy. The folks at Mandrake would not have changed that name if a court of law had not ruled that Hearst Corporation was more deserving of Mandrake name usage than a Parisian software house. Could they have chosen another name? Yes. Which one? and Why? Five years ago they chose Mandriva as a combination of Mandrake and Connectiva, their new Brazilian acquisition. Now, Mageia turns again toward a magic theme, as did the former Mandrake. If you don't prefer Mageia, with what would you replace it? And why?

Re:And, the names get worse

[haruchai]

I've already explained the why in previous posts; feel free to re-read them. Sure, naming things can be difficult but millions of people and companies manage it, even if it takes several tries.
Firefox is a case in point.
If they need help with a name or logo, I'm sure the community would be delighted to offer suggestions. This has worked for many projects in the past - I believe the one or more of the BSDs have used this in the last couple of years. And, considering that so many of the former Mandrake people are French-speaking, I'm surprised they didn't choose Mystique - a word that evokes both magic and intrigue.

Re:And, the names get worse

[Anonymous Coward]

NO.
We don't want people to think that George Bush is screwing around with Linux distributions, do we? ;-)

Re:And, the names get worse

[haruchai]

Good point. I wonder if he edited any of the Linux for Dummies editions.

Go Mageia!

[12357bd]

Mandrake/Mandriva has been by far, the best KDE oriented linux distro, amd one the most user friendly. I hope Mageia keeps the good things on! Go Mageia!

Re:Go Mageia!

[Arker]

Mandrake/Mandriva has been by far, the best KDE oriented linux distro, amd one the most user friendly. I hope Mageia keeps the good things on! Go Mageia!

A very subjective statement - users of Slackware and OpenSUSE and even Kubuntu might disagree.

I havent tried it in awhile but it always aimed at somewhat the same audience as Ubuntu, only based on RH infrastructure rather than Debian, and defaulting to KDE rather than Gnome. It's good to have choices, even if that makes the assessment of 'the best' more difficult and less emotionally satisfying. For some this is certainly the best choice, and I too hope the distribution continues well beyond its commercial origin.

Re:Go Mageia!

[0111 1110]

So what was the difference between Kubuntu and Mandriva? I haven't tried either one.

Re:Go Mageia!

[anshulajain]

The same difference its between good (Mandriva) and bad (Kubuntu).

Re:Go Mageia!

[tronkel]

PCLinuxOS is a Mandriva variant which works beautifully on PCs and is indispensable to me for use on my netbook. Mandriva itself is also great on netbooks. A primary example, that illustrates that Mandriva makes an excellent base to build other distros on. Mandriva seemed to produce solutions that were a breath of fresh air in comparison to the straight-thinking Ubuntu. No criticism of Ubuntu intended here. It's also a big favourite of mine. Remains to be seen though if PCLinuxOs can still produce the goods independently of Mandriva. OK, Mandriva is one of many fine Linux distros out there - but it had a certain something when it came to thinking out of the box. I for one am sorry to hear this sad news. I hope the valued development traditions will somehow continue as a new incarnation of of the distro. If the developers are willing, this ought not to be a problem.

Re:Go Mageia!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kubuntu is probably THE distro that is responsible for the bad name KDE4 got...

Try Mandriva, and you can see how KDE4 really should look like (and should work).
So - please ... do not "trim down" KDE4 to the painful mess it is in Kubuntu.

Give Mageia a chance and bury Kubuntu is some dark hidden place where it never can be found back.. ;-)

Re:Go Mageia!

[Kensor]

The original Linux Mandrake was started in 1998 to merge KDE 1.0 with a Linux base. KDE was added secondarily to Ubuntu to expand its appeal. KDE is at the heart of Mandriva, and is just an add+on for Ubuntu.

Re:Go Mageia!

[the_womble]

Madnriva is faster, feels more polished, and has a very good control centre, and a better network applet.

The only thing that is better on Kubuntu is software installation, especially through the GUI.

Re:Go Mageia!

[Tacvek]

Kubuntu is probably THE distro that is responsible for the bad name KDE4 got...

That sounds odd considering that Kubuntu's KDE install is pretty much the same as if you installed KDE from unaltered source on any distribution. All of KDE4's default settings are at least somewhat questionable. Somebody said that if you take a clean KDE4 install, open up Dolphin, and check the options, pretty much all are set to the oposite of what you would want.

I did so, and agreed that the vast majority of the default Boolean settings were the reverse of what I would want.

That sort of crap is what gave KDE4 a bad name. The fact that Mandriva has a better experience by customizing KDE4 does not mean that KDE4 does not have serious issues. Perhaps it should adopt some of Mandriva's changes for the default configuration.

Re:Go Mageia!

[richlv]

kubuntu... not really. whenever i tried it, kubuntu did not really live up to the promise of being a usable kde distro.

slackware is quite a different thing (and i'm saying that as a slackware user). while things are much more automated than in the early days, that's still quite different from what other distributions on your list deliver (or promise to deliver).

opensuse would probably be the closest, especially given them both being based on rpm. one thing where mandriva/drake/mageuiaieuia might be more sensible - not breaking things "just because" - i already mentioned before problems with zenworks daemon, beagle and the recent "interesting" decision to disable touchpad tapping. not that m people could force reason on suse, although maybe they could have some fork-merge between them with sane defaults ;)

Re:Go Mageia!

[shutdown -p now]

I've heard a lot of people claim that Kubuntu has their own patches for KDE4 which are responsible for instability. No idea how true that is, since I haven't ever looked at package sources.

Re:Go Mageia!

[beermad]

Speaking as a one-time user of Kubuntu, I certainly wouldn't argue with the suggestion that Mandriva's a FAR better KDE distro than Kubuntu. The KDE side of things on any *buntu version is a long way down their priorities; some of the stuff they shipped (like the bloody awful package manager "upgrade" a few years ago) was somewhere between useless and crap. It was things like that and the fact that every Kubuntu upgrade wrecked my system at least once (so I needed to restore from my backups) that sent me running from it and back to Mandriva.

Re:Go Mageia!

[MonsterTrimble]

So is there a GOOD debian based KDE distro then? It seems that the linux world is slowly shifting towards a Gnome/Debian and KDE/RPM dynamic.

I use Kubuntu (poor masochist I am) and I like KDE as a baseline but usually add in a lot of the big Gnome projects (Pidgin, Thunderbird) from the repos along with K3B, Amarok & Dolphin. I am comfortable with the Debian command line tools as well, hence the reason I am looking for this odd beast.

Re:Go Mageia!

[Tacvek]

That could be, but much of KDE's bad rep is not based on instability, but more the half-baked feel the default configuration gives.

good

[onefriedrice]

Phew. I was beginning to think there might not be enough Linux distributions.

Re:good

[BitZtream]

There are an infinite number of Linux distributions spread across an infinite number of universes.

The problem is just finding the right universe to start looking in.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously,

Lately, Linux has been doing too much forking, and not enough spooning...

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell as long as the well for names like Mandriva, and Magaeia, has not run dry, there shalt be a linux distro.

eh

[buddyglass]

Honestly I wish they'd just glom onto some other popular distro and make it even better. Between Fedora, SuSE, Mint and all the flavors of Ubuntu, do we really need Mandriva?

Re:Why not Vulva? Why not Vagina?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because those are proper names: vagina is and Vulnavia is close enough. And I don't mean Alota Vagaine.

My eyes!

[MachDelta]

Goddamn, I skimmed the headline in my RSS feed and saw "Developers Fork Mandriva Linux, Creating Mangina."
I really need to cut back on the caffeine. :\

Re:My eyes!

[PotatoFiend]

I usually find "Did anyone else read xxxxx?" posts contrived, unfunny whoring for Funny moderation, but this time I actually read the same thing as you. Since the advent of "Mandriva", "Mangina" certainly seems plausible.

Re:My eyes!

[Joe Tie.]

The only operating system endorsed by old greg.

MGG

[Anonymous Coward]

How about: MagicGayGit?

They're almost completely different.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what was the difference between Kubuntu and Mandriva?

They only have "n" in common. Pretty different distros.

I just looked it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny they don't want to add in how to pronounce it or what it means on their page...anyway, it is a greek word relating to magic or sorcery. mag-i'-ah

With that out of the way...stupid move. Give it up all you devs there. Please go join an existing project. We have WAY MORE than enough "distros", especially ones with weird incomprehensible names and a low user/developer base. Is it that hard to learn from history? This has fail written all over it in advance.

Not trying to be snarky or engaging in flambeau baiting, but really..if you ever wake up one day and want to build your own linux distro..DON'T. If you have skills, please try to pick one of the existing top three and make one of those better instead, or work just directly for gnome or KDE or something. Fragmentation is good for..grenades, and that is about it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Which way to go?

[advid.net]

As a big Mandriva fan, since Mandrake 5 - the begining - I 'm quite concerned with all the troubles of this company. I run Mandriva for all my Linux boxes : file server, gateway, laptop, ... (except the NAS with embeded vendor distro) . From time to time I try some other distribution, but I always go back to Mandriva, I feel quite at home with it.

This time I really wonder if this could make me switch to Mageia... I'd like to hear some other fans : we will all give a try to Mageia but will you switch if the real Mandriva is still alive, making new versions ?

About the name Mageia, I don't mind, but I'd like to build the original Mandrake theme, with the magician, even if it can't be release officially due to registered marks.

Mangina

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason I keep thinking the word "mangina".

trademarks and domain names and brands, oh my!

[tverbeek]

The trademark minefield and the growing exhaustion of the domain namespace are both culprits. It's increasingly true that "all of the good ones are taken".

But still.... "Mageia"?

Auto makers have the same problem, and yet they still (usually) manage to invent brand names that consumers will find easy to remember and easy to pronounce. "Mageia" is not. (I just had to look up to confirm the spelling, not a good sign.) A combination of three vowels in a row is confusing: do you pronounce each one? blend them? which ones together? It isn't even clear what language it's derived from, which would at least give someone who knows languages a fair chance of guessing correctly.... I can sound out French or Portuguese or German or any of a few others, but this is going to be different depending on which one I try.

Re:trademarks and domain names and brands, oh my!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Dutch, "koeieuier" = cow's udder. Now, pronounce that!

Re:trademarks and domain names and brands, oh my!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just think that most of the people that are working on this fork project are French- and Portuguese-speaking persons, so this name is sounding totally different to them than to English-speaking people, and remember, there's a lot of people out there that don't speak English.

I'm Italian, and I feel that "mageia" sounds quite easy to me, and i suppose that it will sound easy also in Spanish too.

Anyway, I don't think it will matter... if the fork will be successful, they'll surely change the name, or we will listen and read of it so much that we will get used to it.

Re:trademarks and domain names and brands, oh my!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Spanish the "g" before an "e" would be pronounced almost like an English "h" which is a soft consonant: not the kind of thing you want leading into a string of vowels. So it'd be something like "mah-hay-ee-ah", which I find pretty awkward to wrap my mouth around.

it's

[gumpish]

I think it is loss in popularity has less to do with

lol wut

Re:it's

[Anonymous Coward]

I downmod any post which begins a sentence on the subject line then finishes it in the body.

Marketing 101

[westlake]

Yes because Excel, Powerpoint, Quicken, Maya, and Twitter are so much better . . .

But they really are that much better.

The motivational poster is at least a century old.

Excel, Powerpoint and Quicken play on that same instinct to make your mark, get ahead in your career.

This isn't the image conjured up by the GIMP.

Twitter suggests fun and play. Maya, worlds of illusion, mystery, and magic. The tech that brings home an Oscar. Catapults Blue Sky Studios into the big-time with Ice Age and Scrat.

While a blender is a small household appliance your teenage girl uses to make smoothies.

Re:Marketing 101

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I don't have a teenage girl?

Usage

[Wowsers]

Am I the only person here still using Mandriva? It certainly would explain why some bug reports I've filed seem to have taken forever for anyone to look at them, and even longer for a fix.

Now which distro to support, Mandriva or the new fork?

I settled on Mandrake (as it was then) when it was known as bleeding edge, run on just about anything, and the most user friendly of the installations (with a decent partition manager when installing so you don't install into the wrong place / drive).

Re:Usage

[davmoo]

No, you're not the only one. I use Mandriva extensively, even paying for it plus donating piles of bandwidth (on a real server, not something in a closet in my house) to the project, and for one simple reason. It works. It works correctly. Every time. And it does it right out of the box.

I've never been able to get everyone's darling Ubuntu to install on any hardware I own *even once* without banging on it. Same goes for Suse and Fedora. And I don't have bleeding edge hardware. My feeling is that (unlike a lot of other people, and I know this) I've never had to hammer on Windows or OS X to make them install correctly, therefore I don't feel I should have to hammer on Linux either.

The one shortcoming of Mandriva of late, in my opinion, has been the instability of the company(ies) behind it. I will be watching developments as they unfold. But if I had to select right this minute, I'd probably go with the fork.

Re:Usage

[timbo234]

Am I the only person here still using Mandriva? It certainly would explain why some bug reports I've filed seem to have taken forever for anyone to look at them, and even longer for a fix.

As a previous long time Mandriva user I can tell you this has always been the case. Even one where I provided a fix in the bug report wasn't looked at for over a year. In fact it only got looked at because I made a fuss on a mailing list or forum when I was talking about another problem and someone told me I should file a bug.

One of the reasons that I moved to Opensuse last year, and haven't regretted it.

With that title... (was Re: My eyes!)

[siglercm]

... would it have been so hard to start your comment with, "The goggles, they do nothing!" Would it, really???

What does this mean for Scalix?

[kimvette]

What does the current health of Mandriva mean for Scalix? Scalix is possibly the best alternative to Microsoft Echange right now, for organizations who have grown to expect Exchange groupware functionality but want to get away from Microsoft's convoluted, nickle-and dime licensing schemes.

You say Mageia

[Anonymous Coward]

And I say Mandrake. Err. Mandriva. Seriously. Other distributions change version numbers and include silly release code names like 'filthy flyingfish', 'obstinant octopus' and 'sexy swordfish'. They don't change their names that often. Slackware is still Slackware. Debian is still Debian. Yggdrasil is now known as gone, but that was a long time ago. Good luck to them anyway.

Ducks

[nanospook]

Hopefully they have all their ducks in a row..

just because...

[Anonymous Coward]

just because shuttleworth got away with ubuntu doesn't mean any schmuck can do the same.

mandrake > mandriva > mageia > ______

good luck with that.

Awesome!

[jav1231]

I've been SO waiting for another Linux fork!

Great news

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former Mandriva user (now on Arch) - there is very much a need for Mandriva to continue. It's the distro I always recommend to newbies, and as far as I know it's the only distro that is both extremely user-friendly and has excellent hardware support. I've seen far too many people give up on Linux because Ubuntu didn't like some piece of hardware. For a newbie's first Linux distro, you need to have at least basic support for _all_ hardware straight from the install. I've never seen Mandriva fail at that...and I've also never seen Ubuntu succeed.